Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Montgomery didn’t see the spike in homicides that 2013 presented with 50 murders, but there was an uptick from 2014.

Thirty-nine people were murdered in 2015 — five more than what occurred in 2014 with 34 murders.

“The homicides are the most difficult crimes to try to project what’s going to happen,” said Chris Murphy, director of the Department of Public Safety. “We can tap down a lot of different crime, and we have this year, but homicides are mostly fueled by raw emotion. Unless you’re in that driveway at that time, it’s difficult to project what’s going to happen.”

Out of the 39 murders that happened in the past year, 11 were caused by disputes, said Montgomery Police Department Chief Ernest Finley.

“Many of the murders are caused by split second decisions,” Finley said.

Murphy added that the other general theme law enforcement sees with murders is that many times the victim and suspect already know each other, and they’re involved in some type of criminal activity.

“If prostitution wasn’t involved, the homicide might not have happened. If burglary wasn’t involved, the homicide might not have happened,” Murphy said. “So it’s associated with other things, but it really revolves around those human emotions that flare up and people not having a comfortable way of dealing with that.”

While the incidence of homicides did rise from 2014 to 2015, officials maintain that the number is about average for what Montgomery usually experiences.

“It’s terrible to even talk in terms of averages, but from 1973 through 2014 if you took every one of those homicides and averaged it out, it comes out at 36 is the average number for that time frame,” Mayor Todd Strange said.

“That’s not what we want. We don’t want any,” Murphy said. “But we made arrests on the upper 80 percent of homicide cases. The national average is below 65 percent. So we’re doing very well, but that doesn’t bring anybody back and it doesn’t take the sorrow away from the families and it doesn’t keep the suspect out of prison.”

Because homicides are difficult to project, Finley said one of the most important things law enforcement can do is communicate with the community about problem solving.

“We have to constantly talk conflict resolution, that it’s best to walk away,” Finley said. “It’s best to be that person in your circle who’s going to be level headed and preach calmness, awareness and the consequences of pulling that trigger.”